Sutton Impact: Whiskered Wildcats Are Winning, Grinning

January 18, 1986|By Tim Povtak of The Sentinel Staff

GAINESVILLE — Kentucky Coach Eddie Sutton finished basketball practice Friday morning with a not-so-serious free-throw-shooting contest. He split his team, then grabbed two fans and a sports writer from Lexington, Ky., to even the sides and add a little uncertainty.

Most of the players made their shots. The three newcomers were the deciding factor. The losing team had to order alligator for dinner that night. A few players tasted it reluctantly, like it was french fried poodle.

Everyone had a good laugh. Eddie Sutton was smiling.

''Basketball here is really fun again, a lot looser than it was,'' Kentucky's Winston Bennett said. ''I'd say it was questionable last year whether we even enjoyed it.''

The Sutton Impact.

Sutton, the first-year coach of the most tradition-rich program in college basketball, has made it more than just an honor to play at Kentucky. He has made it fun.

Wildcats basketball always has been respected -- often with reverence -- but it also has been considered stuffy, a high-profile program that used well-oiled robots instead of often unpredictable young men.

Sutton, since taking the job last spring, has taken out the starch. Although he expects to keep the phenomenal winning tradition -- 57 consecutive years without a losing season -- he has taken away much of the pomp that his predecessor demanded.

Outside of winning -- the Wildcats are 14-2, ranked 11th nationally and play Florida today at 2 p.m. (CBS-TV, WCPX-Channel 6) -- Sutton already has broken many Wildcat traditions, stepped on sensitive fat-cat toes and stunned many in the program's hierarchy.

For the first time in history, Kentucky players are allowed to wear mustaches, they can laugh at practice, they can get to know their coach.

He is only the third Kentucky coach since 1930, following legendary Adolph Rupp (880-190, .882 percent) and Joe Hall (297-100, .748 percent), who combined to win five national championships. Both, though, believed in maintaining a virtual dictatorship.

Hall often ruled with an iron hand. He was a caring father figure but a stately one, distant and on a pedestal, unable to get close to his players.

Two weeks after leaving his job at Arkansas and arriving in his Kentucky office, Sutton couldn't understand why no players stopped by just to chat. At Arkansas, his door always was open. Players plopped down for no reason. Kentucky players, though, never before came to visit their coach without being summoned.

The first time Sutton held a team meeting, he interrupted it to offer a joke and lighten the moment. No one laughed. No one knew they were allowed to laugh during a basketball session.

Sutton now often gives a player the opportunity to skip a practice-ending drill if the player can tell a joke that makes everyone laugh.

Upon his arrival, Sutton ended Kentucky's long-running contract with Converse shoes. He wanted Nike shoes, and many influential alumni demanded to know why.

Kentucky people were shocked when it was learned he had talked to the New Jersey Nets last summer about the head-coaching position there.

Shortly after his arrival, one local sports columnist dubbed him ''Coach Perm,'' for his hairstyle, warning him that ''Kentucky folks like their bourbon and their basketball coaches' hair straight.''

Sutton soon got a few letters from fans who asked, ''Why don't you straighten your hair.''

He riled some of the big-name boosters by informing them they were no longer part of the team's traveling party. The Kentucky team plane seats 48 people, and Hall always kept it full. Now half the seats are empty.

After games, Hall had a policy that barred the media from the locker room but gave boosters easy access. Sutton has barred the boosters and opened the locker room to the media.

''I never intended to alienate anyone, but maybe I have,'' Sutton said during practice Friday. ''I'm not running a popularity contest, though. I was hired to do what I do best. You just can't please everyone. You coach what you believe in.

''Some people got upset because I didn't buy a house quick enough, because I changed some things. But I've never known of a sneaker that won a game or a mustache that lost one.''

Under Sutton, the Wildcats are playing more man-to-man defense, free- lancing a little more and seem to be happier. A year ago, four players, on four different occasions, quit the team, then returned for various reasons.

''The changes he's made may be minor, but they mean a lot to us,'' Bennett said. ''Just being able to communicate with him is a big thing. I think everyone here really enjoys playing for Coach Sutton.''

Sutton's biggest personal adjustment has been the demands on his time at Kentucky. Arkansas was basketball crazy after he led the Razorbacks to nine consecutive NCAA tournament appearances and the same number of 20-victory seasons.